China - At least 702 people die in northwestern Gansu province at the weekend when a torrent of mud and rocks engulfs the town of Zhouqu, with more than 1,000 missing. Year of heavy flooding has already killed nearly 1,500.

Pakistan - UN announced on Monday that the Pakistan flooding was the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history, with more people affected than the South-East Asian tsunami and the recent earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti combined. More than 1,600 killed, while almost 14 million have suffered losses requiring long or short-term help.

Central Europe - At least 11 killed and hundreds of homes damaged this week. Flooding in May and June caused hundreds of millions worth damage, killing 18 in Poland, others died in Czech Republic, while thousands were forced to flee homes in Slovakia and Hungary.

Kashmir - Hundreds of people still missing in Indian Himalayas after flash floods hit the remote region of Ladakh, killing at least 177.

Russia - Summer heatwave estimated to have cost almost 5,000 lives. Vladimir Putin ordered a halt to all exports of wheat and other grains due to the "abnormally high temperatures" and most of harvest being wiped out by fires. Heatwave could wipe up to $14 billion off economic growth according to economists.

Australia - Coldest June in nearly 30 years in Sydney with temperatures dropping to 39F (4C).

But you don't have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture. Basically, derivatives are financial instruments whose value depends upon or is derived from the price of something else. A derivative has no underlying value of its own. It is essentially a side bet. Originally, derivatives were mostly used to hedge risk and to offset the possibility of taking losses. But today it has gone way, way beyond that.

Today the world financial system has become a gigantic casino where insanely large bets are made on anything and everything that you can possibly imagine. The derivatives market is almost entirely unregulated and in recent years it has ballooned to such enormous proportions that it is almost hard to believe. Today, the worldwide derivatives market is approximately 20 times the size of the entire global economy.

Because derivatives are so unregulated, nobody knows for certain exactly what the total value of all the derivatives worldwide is, but low estimates put it around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars. So what is going to happen when this insanely large derivatives bubble pops? Well, the truth is that the danger that we face from derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet has called them "financial weapons of mass destruction".

One day some event will happen which will cause a sudden shift in world financial markets and trillions of dollars of losses in derivatives will create a tsunami that will bring the entire house of cards down. All of the money in the world will not be enough to bail out the financial system when that day arrives.

Feedback from the likes of Oregon University's Mark Thoma and UC San Diego's James Hamilton suggests the US is at some kind of tipping point with a good number expecting it to fall rather than maintain balance:

68 percent said that conditions are mixed, and the rest split three to one toward weakness rather than growth. For an economy in which growth is the norm, 47 percent of respondents think that the US economy is worse than official statistics indicate, and only 5 percent believe it is better.

It is also worth noting, however, that only a minority, albeit a large one - 35 percent - thought the US had a more than 60 percent chance of entering a double-dip recession.

Full report: - http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/econ_blogger_outlook_q3_2010.pdf

The announcement appears to be a show of bravado after the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said last week that the US military has a contingency plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea. The US and some of its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the charges, saying its nuclear program is geared merely toward generating electricity, not bombs.

The deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Kan'ani Moghadam, said graves for any attacking US troops have been dug in Iran's southwestern Khuzestan province, where Iran buried Iraqi soldiers killed during the ruinous 1980-88 war between the Islamic republic and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam's soldiers have now been prepared again for US soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this big number of graves," Moghadam said, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

After almost two weeks of fires that have claimed over 50 lives and even part destroyed a military storage site, the authorities said they were making progress in fighting fires that still covered 174,035 hectares of land. "A positive dynamic in liquidating the wildfires continues to be observed," said the head of the emergencies ministry's crisis unit, Vladimir Stepanov.

"The numbers (of emergency workers) have been increased in those regions where there is a difficult situation with the fires," he added. The emergencies ministry said that over the last 24 hours, 247 new fires had appeared, more than the 239 that were extinguished, and 557 fires were still raging across the affected region.

Meanwhile, officials said fires close to the town of Snezhinsk in the Urals and home to one of Russia's top nuclear research centres had been localised. The acrid smog from wildfires 100 kilometres (60 miles) out in the countryside that descended over Moscow lightened Tuesday morning but forecasters warned it could return and the air quality was still dangerously poor.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education - that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children - is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

We're told that we have no choice, that basic government functions - essential services that have been provided for generations - are no longer affordable. And it's true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn't be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

"It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God. It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during British rule, only S510 extends control over all food in the US, violating the fundamental human right to food." says Dr Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto's Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create without judicial review if it passes.

S510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food AND FARMING.

Dr Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist with the University of Arkansas, presented her findings to the 9th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America on Friday. Sagers said her findings showed there is a lack of "proper monitoring" and control of GM plants in the United States, reported Nature.

Sagers said, "The extent of the escape is unprecedented." NPR reported that all the varieties of GM canola that Sagers and her team found growing wild in Dakota were all modified to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, but at least two different GM varieties bred together to produce a third variety of GM with a new trait, prompting Sagers to say. "What we've demonstrated in this study is a large-scale escape of a genetically modified crop in the United States."

As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures. Nothing like this has ever been seen in this magnitude in Bolivia. Inhabitants of riverside communities report the smell is nauseating and can be detected as far as a kilometer away from river banks.

River communities, whose livelihoods depend on fishing, fear they'll run out of food and will have nothing to sell. Authorities are concerned there will be a shortage of fish in markets and are more concerned by possible threats to public health, especially in communities that also use river water for bathing and drinking, but also fear contaminated or decaying fish may end up in market stalls.

They've begun a campaign to ensure market vendors and the public know how to tell the difference between fresh and unhealthy fish. In university fish ponds and commercial fisheries the losses are also catastrophic.

The proposed $30 billion, 10-year arms package, which would be one of the biggest single deals of its kind, has been a source of behind-the-scenes tension during months of negotiations. Israeli officials have repeatedly conveyed their concerns in private that the US risks undermining its military advantage by equipping regional rivals with top-flight technologies.

US officials say they provided "clarifications" in recent weeks about the deal to help damp Israel's qualms. Two officials close to the negotiations said Israel still had some reservations, but that the country isn't expected to challenge the sale by lobbying Congress, which can hold up the deal or push for assurances of its own. The administration is expected to formally notify Congress of its plans as early as next month.

The information-sharing with Israel is part of a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to maintain its military edge in the region. Congress has the power to block any weapons sales deemed detrimental to Israel's military advantage.

Shares in Danish brewer Carlsberg fell 5.1%, while Diageo, which owns brands such as Guinness, shed 2.2%, and Associated British Foods fell 1.5%. The Food and Agriculture Organization has played down fears of a food crisis. On Wednesday, the FAO cut its global wheat production forecast for the year, but said that fears of a world food crisis were "not justified at this point".

That's largely because global wheat stocks have risen substantially in the past couple of years, peaking in June at just under 194 million tonnes, according to US government estimates. As wildfires continue to rage across the country, Russian railways said it would stop exporting grain from Saturday, in accordance with the export ban which is set to continue until December.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov suggested Russia could reassess the ban after the harvests in the autumn. Russia is the world's third largest wheat exporter. Its biggest customers include Egypt, Turkey and Syria.

Three Poles, three Germans and five Czechs were killed, while further north in Lithuania four people were killed. Three other Czechs were reported missing after the downpours on Saturday triggered the floods. The army, police and fire services were using helicopters and boats to move people away from the flood zones and clear flood debris.

The heavy downpour caused Poland's Miedzianka river to overflow, flooding Bogatynia before swelling the Niesse river. One woman drowned in Bogatynia while a 55-year-old firefighter was swept away when a dyke burst its banks. Another woman drowned in the nearby town of Zgorzelec, across the Niesse from Goerlitz.

The Neisse reached its highest recorded level of 7.07 metres (23 feet). "The flood wave hit the town in a few hours. We couldn't do anything to get ready for that," the mayor of Goerlitz, Michael Wieler, told German TV. Police said 1,500 people evacuated their homes in Goerlitz as torrents of water rushed through the streets.

NHS trusts which cover parts of the home counties - such as St Albans - report less than six in ten mothers are white British. The figures will reignite the debate about the scale of immigration and the scale of social division, as well as the impact on public services. Ministers have pledged to force migrant workers to buy their own private health care to help reduce the burden on the NHS.

Under the proposals non EU migrants would be entitled to emergency care but would have to buy insurance to cover the costs of GP visits and most operations. The statistics raised fears the country is becoming increasingly divided along ethnic lines. Last month it emerged that Britain's population growth is outpacing every other country in Europe.

Immigration and rising birth rates driven in part by the children of new arrivals - the so-called 'immigrant baby boom' - meant this country gained more people than anywhere else in the continent. There were also warnings last week that Hungary is set to hand two million passports to people living outside the EU. Ministers have pledge to put a limit on the number of immigrants from outside the EU given work permits for the UK.

Electricity supplied from Brazil and Paraguay rose to a daily combined record of about 1,000 megawatts on July 12, while consumption peaked at 20,396 megawatts three days later, according to Buenos Aires-based energy broker Cammesa. Shipments of liquefied natural gas are set to double this year.

In July, temperatures in Buenos Aires were, on average, 1 degree Celsius below the usual low and high of 8 and 14 degrees (46 and 57 degrees Farenheit), with temperatures plummeting to about 2 degrees Celsius on July 15. Also on July 15, temperatures in Mendoza, the wine-producing region in western Argentina, fell as low as -8.9 degrees Celsius below the temperature registered that day in the Argentine-controlled area of the South Pole, according to a national weather institute report.

Argentina is bracing for a renewed polar front this month. On August 1, almost half of the country's 23 provinces registered temperatures below zero, while the northern city of La Quiaca on the border with Bolivia fell to -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit.) The average low predicated through August 5 is 1 degree, according to the National Weather service.

More than 45,000 people have reportedly already been evacuated from the area. Local officials say thick mud, more than 1m (3.3ft) deep in some places, is hampering rescue efforts.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao flew to Gansu after receiving news of the disaster. He told officials to "spare no efforts to save lives". More than 1,400 people are believed to have been killed this year in unusually severe flooding in central and southern China. About 1.4 million homes have been destroyed, 12 million people evacuated, and 87,600 sq km (22m acres) of crops ruined, officials say.